Albion Remains
by irnan
Summary: SPOILERS FOR 4.14


_This is a disclaimer._

_**AN:** Mentions of __'American Gods'__ and __'Lord of the Rings'_ and Irish fairy tales and '_Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell'_. General weirdness committed and liberties taken with more sacred tales than Kripke's.

**Albion Remains**

t's Sunday morning, somewhere in Iowa, and the mental list Dean keeps of _Really Bad Ideas I had That I Will Never Try Again_ has just been added to.

At least, Dean thinks it's Sunday morning. It's a little hard to tell down here. But the last time he looked at his watch it was late Saturday night, and he very much doubts he's been out of it for that long.

He hopes he hasn't been out of it for that long. He also kinda wishes he hadn't bent to pick that comb up in the parking lot of the bar, but hey. No point crying over spilt milk. And anyway, that girl was absolutely smokin'... right up until she turned into a banshee.

Wherever he is, it's dark, dank, and cold. Judging by the whisper of air across his face and the noise his boots are making scuffing over the concrete, it's also a large, empty space, which means a basement of some kind. Dean's guessing an old one, likely abandoned. Banshees aren't exactly inconspicuous in their true forms. Remembering even that short glimpse he had last night of the way it truly looked makes Dean shudder. Its sheer perfection had been terrifying in a way he can't quite explain, an otherworldly beauty that Lovecraft might have dreamed about. Long silver hair, eyes of a grey so pale it was barely a colour at all, skin like Snow White's... but that _mouth_. That blood-red mouth...

Dean shakes his head angrily to clear the image from his mind, and in doing so, his face scrapes across the floor he's lying on. He twists and curses angrily, but his hands are tied behind his back with rope so tight that it's cutting into the skin of his wrists. There's another one wrapped around his ankles, and the final indignity is the length of rope that ties wrists to his ankles, his legs bent viciously and his back arched just enough to be painful and achey.

The basement, if that's what this place is, is silent and still. Dean's curses, the noise of his movements, are too loud, shattering the quiet like glass, and his voice echoes a little, confirming his suspicion that this place is actually pretty frickin' big. He's got no light to see by, and even though his Zippo is still in his jacket pocket (the one he's lying on, actually; it's digging painfully into his hip), Dean's not the Winchester with the freaky psychic powers, so he can't close his eyes and magic it out of there and into his hand to burn through the ropes or anything similarly heroic and implausible.

In short, he's screwed.

He's getting too old for this shit. He really is. A few weeks ago he turned thirty, for cryin' out loud. Sam got him a new copy of _American Gods_ to replace the one that the kid had thrown away while Dean was downstairs, and then they'd gotten quietly shitfaced watching _Raiders of the Lost Ark._

That, of course, was before it was revealed that Dean is weak and whiny and has been holding his baby brother back his entire life. Well, thinks Dean viciously. That won't be a problem much longer. In a few hours, Sammy Winchester will be Ruby's personal plaything for the rest of his (un)natural life. Dean went to Hell to save Sam, and this is what he gets. A barrage of insults and death by banshee.

Super.

Dean does some more hopeless twisting and writhing, more to give himself something to do than for any other reason. He knows perfectly well that he's not getting out of this by himself. There's nothing to do but lie here on his side and run through every cuss word he's ever heard in every language he either speaks, has picked up in rags and tatters at roadside bars and big city ghettos, or has heard of in passing but doesn't know a word of aside from the local equivalent of _merde _and _arschloch_.

There are a surprisingly large number of them. Dean guesses he's cursing for nearly twenty minutes, and then he starts getting hoarse, so he stops.

"Carry on, won't you," a voice says in the darkness. "I've never heard some of those before, and I've been around for a long time."

Dean freezes up. It's a woman's voice, low and gentle, and her Irish brogue is so thick he can barely make out what she's saying at first. It takes him maybe three sentences to adjust to it, however. Maybe that's a part of her magic as well. Hard to lure guys to her lair if they can't understand her promises.

"What do you want with me?"

He can't see her, but there's a swshing noise of cloth being dragged over stone, and he understands that the banshee is moving, her long gown rustling over the floor like dead leaves dancing in the wind. She comes close and kneels by him, and Dean can smell grief on her like it's a living thing that she carries around with her instead of an emotion.

"What does any one of the Fair Folk want with you mortals?" she asks, so close that her hair brushes across his face and her breath is cold and grave-rotten on the side of his neck. Dean wants to roll over onto his front and hide his face from her, but the way he's tied up right now, he'd end up looking pretty ridiculous, so he stays where he is.

"I don't know," he says. "I've never met one of you before."

She sighs, slow and sad. "No, I suppose not. This is a bad land for Gods."

"You're no God," Dean says.

"I am what I am," she says with finality, an answer that isn't one. Her hand over his heart is cold and heavy and wet like rotten flesh, like decomposing corpses.

_Bean sidhe_ are women of the mounds. _Bean sidhe_ are harbingers of a death in the family. No wonder she seems dead herself. Like Snow White in her glass coffin, a corpse artificially preserved. Dean shudders again under the pressure of that hand on him, cringing away from her.

What _is_ it with the alluring not-dead immortal chicks lately?

"I thought Faerie mounds were supposed to be more enticing than this," Dean says at last, with a tremendous effort to be casual and flippant about it.

She laughs softly, bones rattling in a coffin. "Oh, they are. They are. You'll soon see. I'll show you. You'll even like it."

Dean draws a deep breath. Her hand is still resting on his chest, and it feels as if cold is seeping outwards from there, sinking into all his bones, making it difficult to breathe. "Been there, done that. Bought the T-shirt. Think I'll pass."

This time, the banshee snorts. "You _Christians_," she laughs. "With your Hell and your damnation! Oh, Dean. You'll see."

"Wouldn't it have been better to keep me under and let me wake up once we're over there?" Dean manages.

The banshee laughs again. At least he's amusing her, Dean thinks savagely. He'd hate to be boring. "Of course," she says. "But what fun would that be?"

And that's when Dean thinks he begins to understand. "Fun," he said. "You think - you spend your days enticing mortals into Hell because we're fun?"

She _tsks _now, sounding exasperated. "Honestly, Dean. You should pay more attention to the true tales. They don't call us the Fair Folk as a _compliment_."

Dean struggles up for one last quip that he is completely unable to resist. "You will introduce me to the gentleman with the thistle-down hair, won't you?"

The banshee digs her nails into his chest, five perfect pinpricks of pain around his heart, and Dean slips away into darkness.

*********

Dean's being carried. At least, he thinks so. No one's carried him anyplace in years, so it's a little hard to tell; he can barely remember what it felt like, apart from warm and sleepy and floppy and safe, with Dad's heartbeat under his cheek and Mom's hand stroking over his hair when they tucked him into his brand-new bed with the aeroplanes on the covers.

He's sleepy, that's for sure. Floppy, too. None of his limbs are working on command. He thinks, for a minute, that he might - might - be safe, a flower-like smell and a suggestion, a hint, an idea of meadows and streams and warm sunlight on his naked back while he kisses the pale, perfect girl wrapped around him - but then the aches in his back and legs make themselves heard rather obnoxiously, and the sting of his wrists where the ropes cut into them, and he thinks his face might be grazed from that stone floor and now the grave-stench of the banshee is in his nose stronger than ever.

Fuck, he _is_ being carried. Sam better not ever, ever bring this up again, or Dean will -

- but right, Dean's weak and pathetic and holding Sam back, so he won't come and Dean doesn't need to worry about being carried around like a doll by a chick who looks like Snow White gone gray anyhow.

He doesn't open his eyes. He's fairly sure they're outside, but it's still dark. Great. Sunday night if he's lucky, which hasn't been the case much lately. There's a breeze starting up, attacking the loosely-flapping ends of his jacket and sneaking through his clothes to bite his bruised, maltreated skin. The banshee doesn't seem to be in a hurry, but when she shifts her grip on Dean's body, hoisting him up a little like he's still a four-year-old, Dean wonders if maybe, maybe, they're going uphill.

Up a mound.

Uh-oh. This is bad. Somehow he doubts that Cas is gonna come raise him from a faerie mound. For one thing, it sounds pretty lame. _I'm the one who gripped you tight and raised you from the otherworld?_ Doesn't have the same ring to it, in Dean's opinion.

For another thing, Cas hasn't stopped by since the Thing With Anna And Ruby And Alistair.

Eventually, the bashee stops. She kneels, or maybe just bends over, Dean can't tell. At any rate, she lays him down in a patch of grass, fresh and cool against his skin. He lets himself go limp, no matter that there's a stone digging into his lower back and the ground is lumpy and the grass is wet, gorramit, his clothes soaking up water by the second. The banshee rests a hand on his cheek, brushes her fingers over his chin, down the length of his neck, across his chest to his heart. Then she draws away and stands up.

"You'll soon see," she says quietly. Dean dares, at last, to open his eyes.

They are on a mound, at the very top. All around them he can see the tops of trees, although how she found a wood in frickin _Iowa _Dean can't imagine. That implies they've come a fairly long way, which in turn implies he's in real trouble even if he makes it out of this, because his baby is still in god-forsaken Des Moines, dammit. Overhead the stars are out, and the full moon casts a terrible glow over the banshee. Dean shudders away from the sight of her, same as before. She looks lit up from the inside, the deathly glow of a corpse-candle infusing her body, shining out through her skin. Dean thinks of Minas Morgul, and the corrupted flowers blooming in the shadow of the Witch-King's fortress.

Now would be a really, really good time to get the Hell out of here.

But he can't move. He really can't. He wants to - he can picture it perfectly, see himself rolling to his feet, knocking into her, running through the grass to the trees and disappearing into the woods. But nothing happens. His legs stay still and his arms won't move, and she's opening that blood-red mouth, wider and wider. Suddenly, and wth absolute certainty, Dean knows that if she starts to sing, he's lost.

He can't even bring his hands up to his ears.

The banshee tilts her head back to the moon and seems to take a breath, and then her head snaps forward, and there's red everywhere, staining that perfect face, that silver hair. She screeches, a noise of pure inhuman fury that, coming directly after that gunshot, tears Dean's eardrums irreparably, and whips around to face her attacker, still screaming. There's another gunshot, and now, finally, Dean manages to move: he rolls over onto his stomach and wraps his arms around his head, sobbing with the pain of those noises.

Then there's silence. Blessed, beautiful silence.

He's not quite crying, but he's not far away from it either, gasping for air and barely able to keep his eyes open, it hurts, it hurts too damn much, and then hands on his shoulders, turning him over, pulling him against a much warmer, more solid body than the banshee's, and Dean would be grateful if Sammy didn't choose that moment to talk, damn the kid.

"Dean? Dean, my God, are you OK? Dean!"

He passes out again.

*********

This time, when Dean wakes up, he really is warm and safe, and he's certainly not being carried. It's a motel room, and Sam's talking to Bobby.

"I mean, he looks really pale, you know? And thinner, but don't ask me how that's possible after only two days."

"The Fair Folk have a complicated relationship with Time," Bobby says wryly. Dean wants to congratulate him on his Obi-Wan act, but his head hurts too much. In fact, all of him hurts too much. Saved from a banshee by his little brother, and he couldn't lift a finger to help himself. Weak doesn't _begin _to cover it.

"What do I do?" Sam asks bluntly.

"Keep him warm, and keep him fed," Bobby says. "And call me if he wakes up and starts daydreamin' about exotic wimmen and castles and what-have-you. That's usually a bad sign; it means they've got a hold on him. Doesn't often happen with banshees, though. Course, banshees don't often kidnap people in the first place."

"I saw the tapes from the bar," Sam says. "Dean picked up her comb in the parking lot, and - shazam."

"Her comb?" Bobby repeats. "Silver one? Yeah."

"What would she have done to him?" Sam's voice is hushed, fearful. Concerned. Dean should tape it, just in case it never happens again.

"What do any of the Fair Folk want with mortals?" Bobby asks. His words, so like the banshee's, send a shiver down Dean's spine. He blinks and wraps the covers more tightly around himself while they're not looking. "Why weren't you in the bar with him? You have another fight?"

Sam pinches his mouth in that bitchface look that says he's really not impressed with what he's hearing, and doesn't answer. Bobby sighs.

"Well. Call me if you need anything." And he's gone. Dean's indescribably grateful. The last thing he needs is anyone else being around. Not right now. Maybe not ever again.

Sam comes over to his bed and sits down on it. "I know you're awake," he says.

Dean doesn't move. Keeps his eyes shut. Kid might be bluffing. He might!

"Been thinking," Sam carries on.

He thinks too damn much in Dean's opinion.

"You know how that siren was destroying those guys by making them destroy the things that meant the most to them in their lives?"

Dean tenses up, and then feels himself relax, ever so slightly. Put like that... not that it makes anything better, of course. Sam's still a lying bastard Dean hardly recognises who's been cavorting with demons.

But. Still.

Sam sighs. "I'm gonna go get you a burger," he says. Gives Dean's right hand, lying on top of the covers, a brief, firm squeeze.

Dean doesn't open his eyes - his head hurts too much and his stomach is churning and it's starting to dawn on him, slowly but surely, that by now Sam is as completely fucked in the head as Dean himself has ever been, and the knowledge burns like Hellfire - but he squeezes back, a little.


End file.
